Santiago Villaseñor had been in Los Buitres, a fine Madrid group with one EP on Columbia.

According to the liner notes to a 1985 Spanish LP Historia de la musica pop española no. 32 on Alligator Records, Santiago reformed Los Buitres with the drummer Pancho from Los Comperos, but soon they dropped the name “Los Buitres” and had a working name of the “New Group”. The LP lists the band’s members as Santiago Villaseñor (lead guitar, harmonica and lead vocals), Rafael Rios (rhythm guitar), Dani Portilla (piano and vocals), Pancho (drums), plus an unknown bassist who was a friend of Dani.

They recorded two songs at Publivox studio (Estudio Publivox), both originals by Santiago and both sung in English. “Ella se come mi mente” (“She’s Eating My Mind”) has great freakbeat-style lead guitar, and you can’t beat that title.

“Aqui, ahora, entonces” (“Here, Now, Then” would be a literal translation) has a breezier sound, but a cool guitar figure and good harmonies. The excellent lyrics fit in with the time and point to a more appropriate title for the song: “Nothing ever matters much, no one has a care, all that you could ever want, is love right then and there”.

These songs went unreleased until 1985 when Historia de la musica pop española no. 32 included the New Group tracks along with the Los Buitres Columbia EP and two EPs released by Cefe y Los Gigantes.

The sound quality on the Alligator LP is OK for the time, but not as good as these songs deserve. For example, one channel drops out for a few seconds during “Aqui, ahora, entonces”. I see there are mp3 downloads that can be purchased on the ‘net. Maybe these have better sound quality, I haven’t checked.

The information the ’85 LP gives about the New Group is very different from what I heard from one of the members, Ramón Morán, who provided the following correction and the photos seen here:

I would like to make some comments to The New Group, because the information regarding the story of this band is not completely correct. Los Buitres were not related to The New Group, the only relationship was that Santi had been part of that band in the past. Some people who were not part of The New Group are mentioned and some others, who were part of it, are not.

I do not know the source of the information of the Historia de la Música Pop Española LP, but I do not know either Rafael Ríos or Dani Portilla and I can confirm that neither of them were part of New Group at that time. I [was part of the] New Group from its foundation until its disappearance. The only possibility that I can imagine is that some years later some former member refounded New Group and included these two people in the band. But it’s sure that none of them were part of the band during the recording of those two tracks.

Let me you explain the story. The band started in Madrid during the beginning of 1967, the founders being:

Santiago Martínez-Villaseñor (Santi), who was the main singer and the guitarist. He came from Los Buitres.
José R. Company (Pancho), drummer. He came from Los Camperos.
Ramón Morán, bass player. I came from Los Pinchos.

The band was only made up by the three of us but occasionally, some other musicians played with us and we also played with other singers in their shows.

July 1968 we recorded in the Publivox studios the songs “She´s Eating My Mind” and “Here, Now, Then”. This was made under the production and supervision of the American Christian York (“Gipsy”) and the British Paul Murphy.

Publivox was an independent studio that was hired by the producers for our recording. At that time, music companies in Spain only put their money in top artists and none of these companies was concerned about our group.

Apart from the three of us, a fourth member took part in this recording, as a guitarist and secondary singer. His name was Jorge Salvador, and he was from Cuba, but he left the band not too long after that.

In September 1968 Pancho left our band to take part in The Silver, whose drummer has left to join Los Pekenines, a star band in the Spanish pop music. Furthermore, the drummer who was leaving Los Pekenikes, named Jorge Matey, came to The New Group and took the vacancy Pancho has left in our band. So the three bands were still the same but with this rotation in the drummers.As of that moment, the music style of the band changed, when new musicians such as Eduardo Vecino, who was a brilliant guitarist and Pedro, a saxophonist, joined us. The band broke up in the spring of 1969, and Santi and me continued playing as base musicians with singers in their performances.

Ramón Morán

Special thanks to Borja for turning me on to these songs by giving me a copy of the Cefe y Los Gigantes / Los Buitres split LP.